Leading with heart, leading with soul. Proudly forging your path
May was one of the best months of 2023. It’s just because I got selected for my dream Organizing Committee, Leadership Development Seminar 11.0, as one of the delegates Organizing Committee Vice Presidents. Starting from the Event Managers to the rest of the Organizing Committee, it became another family to me from the very beginning. Not only the work but also the fun aspect within the Organizing Committee remain until the end, and still, where we meet one another, it will create millions of talks, which we can talk to for hours and hours.
Introduction
Here we go. I am Sanduni Sasanka, simply a second-year undergraduate who fell in love with AIESEC so hard. As a proud Incoming Global Talent member, I’m really happy to work for the iGT function over three peaks. From my point of view, apart from your functional work, the organising committee experiences are privileges of being an AIESECer. And I got that privilege within one month after joining AIESEC as a newbie, and that one chance taught me not to miss a single chance that you can work for an Organizing Committee. So, currently, I am working in my fourth Organizing Committee as one of the Organizing Committee Vice Presidents for Marketing.
But, to be honest, Leadership Development Seminar 11.0 gave me the best Organizing Committee experience in every aspect of being a leader. Starting from stress handling to risk management, it helped me overcome most of my mistakes and made me a more responsible person who can adapt to any kind of situation without thinking twice. As a delegates OCVP, basically what I had to do was handle the whole membership of the entity and make sure that each and every delegate got the most out of this conference.
For some AIESECers, it was their first leadership conference, but for others, they have been part of conferences like these countless times. But still, at the end of the day, what will remain is the happiness and satisfaction of fulfilling your targets for the event. I got that satisfaction, and for the very first time, I got that many lovely sugar cubes from the CCers.
My experience
Leadership Development Seminar 11.0 taught me how to handle things calmly and how to react to some situations, even if those are not bearable. It taught me to step up from my comfort zone by holding that inner brave girl with me. I am not forgetting one of the most important things that I learned from this experience. It taught me how to be creative and make a peaceful environment to stay in, and I was their smile-maker even though my jokes were so bad sometimes.
Can you all imagine how you will survive in an Organizing Committee like this without a brave OCP who’s going to stand for you when you are stuck with so much work and other stuff? To be honest, I got one of the best OCPs. The one fact that I still truly believe is that we did a great Leadership Development Seminar this time, just because we had a leader who could lead us every time we were stuck on the wrong path.
At last, when I took a look back at those days, I collected so many memories with my beloved ones. I was one of the best AIESECers for some AIESECers, and it was a pleasure to hear that they enjoyed and learned a lot from LDS 11.0. I had the most supportive people in my life. And I’m happy with the way that I came so far by improving my leadership skills drastically, and what I believe is that if you do something by your heart, it will never go wrong.
Why are you still waiting? Why are you still doubting yourself this much? Why don’t you want to just give it a try? Break your boundaries, and come and just take the challenge. Prove to yourself that you can do better and be a better person than you think or others’ think about you. And make friends and memories for life. Trust me, you find everlasting friends there and everlasting memories, which can make you cry just thinking about those moments. This is your chance to test yourself. And remember the good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes.
Finally, what I want to say is,
IF IT IS NOT TODAY, THEN WHEN?
Sanduni Sasanka
AIESEC in University of Colombo
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